


The Light Fantastic

by togina



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Period Typical Homophobia, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 15:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/togina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The biggest difference between Steve Rogers and Captain America, Bucky had decided, wasn't his bulk. It was that Captain America didn't know how it felt to choke on the blood from his broken nose, spluttering furiously that “this wasn't the plan!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light Fantastic

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so half of this was written in a notebook in late 2011 or 2012. And forgotten, possibly for the better. Then I flipped through tumblr and saw [this](http://bfals.tumblr.com/post/65205511388) post and then apparently needed to go dig through old notebooks and write another two thousand words.
> 
> Pretty much CA:TFA canon compliant, though with some extra dialogue at a crucial scene. Given the canon compliance, I'm hoping the character death does not come as a surprise?

“And look, we can intercept the train here -” One thick fingertip landed on the map, obscuring their objective and half the mountain range. “- which should be easy, since it runs on a schedule.”

“This being the top-secret Hydra schedule?” Dugan muttered dryly. “Brilliant, I think they post that in the London papers, right below the list of Nazi airplane factories, and the keys to Hitler's office.” Captain America blinked at him, clearly trying to process which London paper he meant, and why Dum Dum would suggest something so preposterous. “Cap,” the man under the bowler sighed, “how are we supposed to -”

“ _Reach_ the damn train?” Morita interrupted, tugging the map out from under Steve's over-sized hand. “I'm no college graduate, but I think these pointy things are mountains.” He paused. Tilted his head one way, and the map the other. “And I don't suppose they colored 'em white to show it's a sandy, tropical paradise?”

“The train goes _through_ the mountains,” their intrepid captain replied, as though they'd asked him to solve for two plus two and he worried he'd have to send them all back to grammar school.

“The bus runs down 34th Street, but I don't fancy our chances catching it from the top of the Empire State Building,” Bucky retorted, waiting for comprehension to dawn. Jim shot him a grateful look, and he shrugged. He was used to living in Steve Rogers' fairy tales.

Captain America's brow furrowed, mouth flattening into a familiar line. Give him a pencil to chew on and he could be sitting in a Brooklyn tenement, comics half-sketched over newspapers and the grocer's old receipts. He sorted through a few schematics of the railroad, pointed one out. “There. We can use the cables to get down.” Like every other escapade, it was all drawn out in Steve's head, the fight and improbable victory and resultant glory. The Commandos listened, entranced, as Captain America laid out their roles in his tale.

Bucky leaned back against the concrete wall of the bunker they had commandeered for the night and tried to think of all the usual details Steve didn't bother to color in: rusted fire escapes, an unexpected shiv, icy rain, alleys that led to dead ends, the dog that had nearly taken off Bucky's foot when he paused to shove Steve over the fence. Not that he'd be doing that any more, or he'd end up flattened under the bulk of Vita-Rays and good intentions.

“Zis is _fantastique_ ,” Dernier finally interrupted. “But I believe Dum Dum wondered _when_ ze train would come?”

“And how do we know Zola will be on it?” They all had their own reasons for wanting to catch the doctor – though thankfully none of the other Commandos had spent time in his ward – and Bucky knew Captain America was staring at him, again. Funny, Bucky had never been the dame in Steve's fairy tales, before. The sidekick every time, the accomplice, the Kato to Steve's Green Hornet. They were always avenging someone's honor, sure, but this would be the first time they avenged _his_.

“We have solid information on train times and personnel from SSR intelligence agents,” the captain reassured them, and after a few more questions the team seemed satisfied. Of course they would: they fought in Captain America's war, all spangled costumes, death-defying leaps and daring feats of imagination. The biggest difference between Steve Rogers and Captain America, Bucky had decided, wasn't his bulk. It was that Captain America didn't know how it felt to choke on the blood from his broken nose, spluttering furiously that “this wasn't the _plan_!”

It took Bucky a minute to realize that while he'd been watching a weedy twelve year old bleed all over his only clean shirt, everyone else had left the room to find something that resembled dinner. Except Steve, who had waited, leaning on the table and staring off into the distance. Probably building them airplanes out of snow clouds, to bomb Zola's train with snowflakes and weak winter sunlight.

“What if the train's late?” Bucky asked from across the table, his head nearly bumping Steve's as they bent over the map.

The irritated huff brushed warm across Bucky's cheek. “Then we wait.” Steve glanced up, forehead inches from Bucky's nose, and rolled his eyes. “It's not like anyone will be around to shoot at us.”

“No,” Sergeant Barnes agreed, humming the word. “Not much point, since we'd all be frozen solid.” Steve opened his mouth to retort, and Bucky waved him off. “Not you, _Cap_ ,” he qualified, the nickname weighted on his tongue. “We all know one of your superpowers is to give off more heat than a coal factory, but we aren't all going to fit under your cape.”

Unlike the rest of him, Steve's scowl looked exactly like the pout it always had. “I don't have superpowers. Or a cape.” Nobody but Bucky knew that Captain America whined. Probably because no one could annoy Captain America the way James Barnes could. It was like having his own personal superpower. “And we can ask Howard for something portable, a furnace.” Steve's moue of displeasure smoothed into lines of contemplation. “He should have some ideas,” he declared, tone firm, but the trusty sidekick knew a question when he saw one.

“He'll tell us to bring whiskey,” Bucky replied, letting Steve know that talking to Stark was at least the best option they had. Then, thinking of fire escapes and Brooklyn streets: “What if the cables are rusty?”

Steve threw both hands in the air and nearly clocked his best friend in the jaw. “What if it snows? What if Zola's not on the train? What if an army of snowmen attack us?” He glowered across the table, wounded. “What's _with_ you, Buck?”

“Jim is. And Gabe.” The table bit into Bucky's hipbones, but he leaned farther over anyway to shove his face into Steve's. “Jacques. Lord Johnny. Dum Dum. _You_ are, you jerk.” Steve's breath smelled like the canned ham sandwiches they'd had for lunch, but his nose was all Captain America's, Vita-Rays erasing the layers of scar tissue that had marked out the years and fights of Bucky's life. "I was hoping we'd all walk out of this one – you know, without losing anything to frostbite or stupidity.”

“I told you the plan,” Steve said, voice clipped, his vivid blue eyes unsettled. Bucky had never played his part quite right, was always wandering off the pages of Steve's fantasies and wishing someone had given him the script.

“Yeah, we all go swinging in like Tarzan and save the day. Nifty trick. But what if it _doesn't work_?”

“You think I'd let someone get hurt?” If Steve's indignant face was anything to go by, Bucky had once more failed spectacularly as the supportive boy wonder.

Physically shaking Captain America until his teeth rattled wasn't an option, but Bucky considered it anyway. “I think you're not Superman! If a cable snaps and we go plummeting to our deaths, you'll be plummeting right there with us! Only, maybe a little faster – you're sort of huge.”

Steve fought down the smile that surfaced on his face without permission. Much like his faithful sidekick, Captain America's expressions had trouble following orders. “Bucky, gravity doesn't work like that. We'd all fall at the same rate, barring -”

“What, they fill that costume with encyclopedias instead of muscles?” Bucky tried to rub knuckles into blond hair, but Steve ducked away, laughing hard enough to shake his massive shoulders. Much like his whine, only Bucky knew that Captain America wheezed like a little old lady when he laughed too hard. He'd always worried that it was the asthma, but the asthma was gone and there was Steve Rogers, hunched over and sounding like ancient Mrs. Donovan when she climbed the stairs. “The point is, _professor_ , that we'd all be equally dead, whether you let it happen or not.”

Steve sobered up quickly, reaching out to clasp his friend's shoulder. Bucky was relieved to notice that Captain America's fingers did not wrap all the way around his arm. Even wing men had their pride. “Why are you so worried, Buck?” Because the odds were always changing, Bucky wanted to say, and luck didn't carry over from one bet to the next. “Everything's going to be fine.” Captain America's gaze was determined, but Bucky had grown up with those blue eyes, knew them best without any of the muscles that could pin a promise down.

“You said that before you challenged the Flatbush crew, and Tommy Fink took me out with a pry bar.” Steve winced – he'd admitted later that he kept his eyes closed after Bucky hit the dirt, afraid if he opened them the other boy would be dead.

“That was -”

“And before you ran out to defend Mrs. Voegele from her ass of a husband, and he broke my arm and your face on a street lamp.” Steve flushed an unflattering shade of pink, still a better color on him than blood that looked black under the weak yellow light. “And what you said before the Thompson brothers stuck us in a trash can and rolled us into the East River. And -”

“That's different!” Steve interrupted, practically shouting, even though Bucky's face was still only a hair's breadth away. “It's different now.” It was harder to tell when Captain America stuck his jaw out too far, but a good sidekick knew when his hero's skin was drawn too thin. _I'm different now_ , he didn't say, but it hung in the dusty air between them, in the clench of fingers where Steve hadn't let go.

“No, Steve. You're not.” Steve's eyes were wide, bluer than the August sky over Brooklyn when they sprawled sweating on the roof, bluer than the veins in cold wrists, when Bucky stopped shooting and started checking bodies for a pulse. Steve had taken those blue eyes and that perfect nose to war, but he still didn't see. Somebody needed to teach Captain America a lesson, to show him that he could be bigger and better and stronger but that this wasn't some nickelodeon where they bombed towns but nobody died, and after a few rounds they'd all march home to the sweethearts waiting back in sunny Illinois.

Bucky wasn't sure how kissing him would help, but it didn't stop him from digging his bruised hipbones further into the table's edge and leaning in to press his mouth to Steve's. Maybe it would delay the stupid, cold mission if they had to court martial the sidekick, or hospitalize him when Captain America threw him into a wall – or broke his arm trying to drag him across the table.

Thankfully, the table gave out before Bucky's bones did, and they went down in a pile of wood and map and limbs, Steve's mouth still firmly affixed to Bucky's. A table shard dug into Bucky's leg, and he debated ignoring it for a moment before a jagged piece caught his inner thigh. He yelped and leaned back to find it, letting his gaze linger on a muscular chest, afraid to look up and catch the baffled, irritated expression Steve wore whenever someone deviated from the script. Bucky had put a lot of deviation into that kiss.

But no one had ever called him yellow – though they'd called him plenty else, in twenty years and at least ten languages – and so Barnes braced himself for a scowl, eyes dark with anger that was familiar but rarely directed at him. And Steve's eyes _were_ dark: pupils black as ink and barely blue at the rims, bottom lip caught between straight white teeth the way it always was when something _finally_ knocked some sensible hesitation into Steve's thick skull. Bucky figured there wasn't much to lose at this juncture, since he'd be kicked out of the Army and probably through the concrete wall in a minute; and if someone was going to chew on Steve's lip it might as well be him.

Biting his way into Steve's mouth melted all the bones in Captain America's body, apparently, since he flopped gracelessly onto his back, dragging Bucky down on top of him with one hand still clenched on his shoulder, the other in his hair. The moan vibrated through Steve's tongue and onto Bucky's, the taste of potted meat and weak coffee. Captain America smelled like sweat mixed with cheap laundry soap, like the close air of a room in Brooklyn and a camp fire in a forest. “Bucky,” Steve whispered, when he pulled back far enough to breathe.

“You plan this?” Bucky couldn't help but ask, because Steve's face only glowed that bright when the world fell in line with his stories, satisfaction mixed with surprise that had started to fade with Captain America's successes. His chest pressed to Steve's, forearms bearing the rest of his weight into the bunker floor, one knee between Captain America's legs and the other getting jabbed by a vengeful piece of table. This didn't resemble any of the Rogers fairy tales that Bucky knew.

“No.” Steve shook his head emphatically, blond hair flopping to the side. Bucky raised an eyebrow, and Steve blushed, staring at the ceiling for a moment before meeting Bucky's eyes. For all their flaws, they were neither of them cowards. “I hoped,” he confessed, pressing thick fingers into Bucky's hair with something that felt like wonderment. “I maybe dreamed, the nights you stumbled home drunk with me and not with some doll. Or after the experiment, when I was on tour, that you'd come home and -”

“Save you from your evil stepmother, Cinderella?” Bucky interjected, nudging Steve's unbroken nose with his own when it seemed like the other man might look away. Another one of Steve's fantastic stories, and Bucky had leaned over the table and fallen right into it.

Steve chuckled while trying to frown, and it all coalesced into the pout he'd never outgrown. Ran his hands through Bucky's greasy hair, over the nape of his neck where it had grown out of the cut and started to curl. “I couldn't have planned this,” he said, and Bucky let himself catch Captain America's steady pulse under his lips, mouthing at the corded muscle in his neck. If Steve didn't have the script yet, Bucky could help shade in the opening scenes. “I didn't think you'd - _oh god –_ want -” He gasped, arching off the floor, and Bucky took advantage of the moment to drive their hips together, sucking his way to Steve's jaw.

He pulled up a bit, rubbing his thigh between Steve's legs, tugging an available earlobe into his mouth. Shoved his hand over Captain America's mouth to muffle the shout. “Been drawing me all wrong for years then, haven't you?” he mumbled against a damp ear, pushing off the floor so he could watch Steve's face, lips parted and eyes falling closed, breath hitching as he arched into Bucky's thigh.

“Guess stamina isn't one of your superpowers,” Bucky teased, still breathless and aching in his fatigues. Steve blinked at him, red high on his cheeks and lips swollen. If he was trying to glare, it got lost in the dopey expression written in his smile.

“Shut up. Jerk. Not like I've done this before.” And that - that made Bucky grind helplessly down onto Steve, thinking of thousands of charcoal stories and ludicrous schemes, always the hero and sidekick, never a dame in sight. With effort, he rolled away and onto a drawing of a railroad. Steve frowned. “But Buck, you haven't -” He stuttered. Turned an amusing shade of red. “I mean, don't you want. . .?”

“A bed,” Bucky groaned, stumbling to his feet on uncooperative legs. “And a door that locks. Preferably far away from anyone who might hear you shouting my name.” He wiggled one eyebrow at Steve, whose blood seemed to have migrated rapidly south. “That plan work for you, punk?”

“Ungh,” Steve replied, suddenly a flurry of movement, grabbing Bucky by his shirt and dragging him out the door.

It turned out the five-minute search for a room at the edge of the camp gave Captain America enough time to redraw his accomplice to fit all those other plans he hadn't made. And he even gave Bucky the script, page by colorful page.

* * *

The problem with Steve Rogers' plans was that they were all fantasies.

“Steve, dammit, _no_.” And Bucky was playing the wrong role again, loyal but out of costume. “There's nothing here but a bunch of trees scrawnier than you were and five guys who get paid to stare at Captain America.” He scowled, crossed his arms and shivered. Whatever the contraption was that Stark had sent up with them, it didn't offer much solace during a perimeter check. And Morita had commandeered the whiskey.

Steve stuck his hands over Bucky's frozen ears, and he swatted them away.

“It's the team,” Steve argued back, ignoring Bucky's attempts to pry him off, his voice muffled by the palms clamped over reddened ears. “They won't care.” That wasn't how fairy tales went, after all. Anyone who begrudged the prince and princess their happiness turned into a toad. But as far as Bucky knew, the only stories with two princes were the ones painted in Steve's head.

“You don't know that!” Steve stepped closer, and Bucky let him, yearning for the heat he radiated and the warmth in his eyes. They'd had one night, at camp, and then two frigid days where Bucky stuck by Jacques and avoided all Captain America's plans.

“You remember Archie Herbst?” It wasn't like there were no three-letter boys in Brooklyn, especially by the Navy Yard. Everybody stuck to their side of the street, and nobody said nothing. But people were out of work again, in 1938, and summer was bad enough without men standing in bread lines, restless and ashamed. Archie Herbst, barely bigger than Steve though ten years older, who walked with his head a little too high, bony wrists above hips that wriggled when he walked.

Archie Herbst, who they had left naked in the middle of the street for standing on the wrong side of it, for smiling a little too wide. He was purple and black with bruising, dust caked to all the places they had made him bleed. Bucky woke up early, lucky to still have a job at the docks. Lucky to be the kind of boy who didn't smile easy. He'd closed the shutters on his way out. Steve slept late, some mornings, and maybe the police would move the body before he could see.

“They shouldn't have done that to Archie,” Steve said, tone brimming with sympathy, blue eyes dark.

Bucky huffed, banged his head against Captain America's solid shoulder. “No, they shouldn't've,” he agreed, trying to stick to the storyline, to stay in the frame. “But they _did_. Folks we know did – Mr. Mercer at the garage, who paid me extra the week you went to the hospital with rheumatic fever. Johnny Yenner, who let you paint that bar sign every year, even though it still looked new. Good folks.”

“No one should get killed for being different.” Steve's fantasies brimmed with shoulds, sketches of worlds where bad men should be easily vanquished by good, where wishing for something should make it so. He felt the muscles under his forehead, the warm pressure on his ears, and the cold hands he had wrapped around Captain America's waist, unconsciously on script. Steve's world, where good men became strong men, where his loyal accomplice would never leave his side, even when it would have been smart to let go. In twenty-six years, only Sarah Rogers had taught Steve that not all dreams came true, when his happy endings had been left crumpled and torn in a rainy cemetery, ink running off paper and into freshly turned earth.

“Fine,” Bucky sighed, lifting his head and kissing Steve briefly because he could, because they were out of sight and because he came to life under Steve's fingers, painted in brighter colors than he dared imagine for himself. Because when he went out of the frames, it was to ensure that all Steve's stupid fantasies came true. To do things best left out of the story. “But do me a favor, huh? Tell 'em after the Skull is dead?” Steve frowned, reluctant, but blue eyes had already begun mapping out the story, probably with champagne glasses and victory toasts.

Jim and Dum Dum came over the rise, patrolling the opposite direction. Bucky pulled away, and Steve let him, fingers catching at the shells of his ears until they grasped at nothing but wintry air. “Okay. Fine.” For all his experience at it, Steve Rogers still lost fights with poor humor and bad grace. “But it shouldn't -”

“Where's my whiskey, Fresno?” Bucky hollered, jogging off through old snow before Steve could finish, ears and lips still tingling where they'd touched warm skin. Someday, he would make Captain America understand that sometimes what should be didn't make a damn bit of difference to what _was_.

* * *

“See,” Captain America muttered resentfully. “The cable's not rusty.” If Bucky's blood had been circulating like a super soldier's and not frozen solid, he might have been resentful, too. Steve had waited for Bucky's watch early that morning, hoping to steer them off into the woods and alone, and instead had spent the two hours listening to a sleepless Falsworth regale them with tales from his rugby days. Steve hated it when things didn't go according to plan.

“F-fantastic,” Bucky spat back, teeth chattering. He jammed his hands under his arms, hoping they'd be warm enough to hang on to the metal ties Howard had given them. At least long enough to fall _onto_ the train, instead of next to it. Everyone else had the good sense to huddle by the heater that doubled as a radio, but Captain America wanted to stand on the ledge where it was windy and even colder. And there his moronic sidekick stood, shivering beside him in the scene. There was nowhere else Bucky would want to be, no fairy tales better than Steve's.

“You should still go first, you'll plummet faster than the rest of us.”

Bucky could _hear_ Steve roll his eyes. He nudged his friend in the ribs, gave a grin that split his chapped lips when Steve met his eyes. “You got a plan, right?”

“Bucky!” The wind ripped the scandalized word out of Steve's mouth, tore it away down the mountain before the Commandos could catch it. “We've gone over this ten times! We made provisional arrangements in case _snowmen_ attack! What part of the plan do you not -”

“I didn't mean a plan for this,” Bucky clarified, lifting his chin to gesture at the train he could see coming around the pass, too far away for anyone but a sniper to notice. “I meant a plan for after.” He kept his face to the train, slanted his eyes sideways to catch Captain America's blush. “Hopefully something with a bed?” he prompted, licking his cracked lips.

Captain America swallowed wrong and coughed, spitting over the side of the mountain. “Um.” Face bright red from choking on his inhibitions, nose running, blue eyes tearing in the wind, Steve still looked better than Superman. He edged as close to Bucky as he could, their shoulders brushing. “Yeah,” he murmured, smiling when Bucky pulled his left hand out from the warm space under his arm and curled it over Steve's bicep, facing forward so the team couldn't see. “I've got a few plans. I'll tell you about them, on the ride back to base.”

Then Gabe spoke and they turned to face him, Bucky stifling a grin. Some plans didn't need a sidekick trying to point out how the world really worked – and he wouldn't tamper with these particular fantasies at all.

* * *

Sarah Rogers had died, even though in all Steve's comics he saved her, invented a cure or worked jobs that would have killed him with his weak lungs to have enough money for the fancy hospitals the rich folks used. He had loved her more than anything, Bucky remembered, but it hadn't been enough to keep her from tumbling off the page and into the grave.

His numb hands wrapped around a creaking rail, velocity pressing him into the corrugated steel. The metal shrieked under the strain, and he caught sight of Steve running down the length of the car, and tried to shake his head.

“That is not a plan, Steve!” he screamed, wondering if his voice carried anywhere but down.

“It's a fantastic plan,” Steve shot back, cowl off and face pale. His breath came in short, strangled gasps, puffs of white steam that vanished immediately, gasping like he was still little Steve Rogers whose chest was too tight.

He swung out of the train before Bucky could say anything else, too busy biting through his lip and trying not to look down to force out all the important questions. _What if that rail doesn't hold your weight? What if the whole panel comes loose? What if my fingers are too cold to bend? What if this is it, Stevie? What if it's the goddamn end of the line?_ “It's the plan where we hold hands and -” The metal shifted, wailing, and Bucky cursed as one side of the rail pulled free. “- and climb back in the train, and . ..” His voice caught, and the wind drew tears from his eyes, streaming sideways over his temple. “And I'll tell you the rest when we get back inside.”

Steve believed it, too. Gave Bucky one of those smiles the superhero always wore, grinning at his sidekick when it seemed like they'd been surrounded, right before he saved the day. He didn't see that there were almost six feet between them, that the whole piece of steel was ripping off the frame. Steve saw the happy endings, but not the knights the dragon killed along the way.

“C'mon, Buck,” he said, stretching his whole body farther away from the train. That close, his smile lost some of its ink, pale and tremulous instead of brightly cocksure. “Something wrong with my plan?”

It should have worked. If Bucky had been a little faster, or his hands a little warmer, if the bolts on the rail had held for a second longer – if wishing for something could make it so. Captain America's plans always worked, but Bucky never managed to stay in the frame, couldn't help deviating from the script.

And someone needed to teach Captain America a lesson, the one he hadn't learned at his mother's side. Someone needed to teach him that sometimes a man's neighbors beat him to death for smiling too wide, that good mothers died even when their sons begged God to make a trade, that just because something _should be_ didn't mean that it _was_.

Bucky let go of the rail, but it turned out everything fell at the same rate, after all. Plummeted out of the story, colors dripping off tear-stained paper and onto a cold grave.

He kept screaming even after he'd run out of air, wishing desperately, futilely, to be at Steve's side. _Someone_ had to teach Steve Rogers how the world really worked - he just hadn't ever wanted it to be him.


End file.
